and intres86, one more thing, why, doesn''t anybody really do this? do animation directly to the primary surface? doesn''t it make things a bit faster coz you don''t have to blit everything all else up?

Doesn''t that waste memory, catching the area of the screen you are about to move to. Computers are so fast now, blitting a background isn''t going to effect your performance that much. And if you have that much on screen that you think blitting the background will slow the refresh down, won''t wasting the memory holding a part of the screen by? Please correct me if I am wrong here.

You''ll have to clear the screen. Obviously, the trails are left by the blitting of your sprite, which stays there until you clear it.

There are many ways to clear the screen but you''ll do fine blitting an entire background. I don''t know what API you''re using, so I can''t tell you how to clear the screen exactly.

Do not blit to the primary surface directly, because, this is being accessed by the hardware. Thus, your scene might appear on screen before it''s done. This might not be a problem today on a small game. But it will cause flickering or something, especially on older computers runing a demanding game. Just blit to the back buffer and flip it when you''re ready.